He turned and walked the streets; it was three o'clock before he reached his home.

CHAPTER XIII

"MORTIMER STANT"

I

Next morning Peter went round to Cardillac's flat and made his apologies. Cardillac accepted them at once with the frankest expressions of friendship.

"My dear old Peter, of course," he said, taking both Peter's hands in his, "I was horribly blunt and unpleasant about the whole thing. I didn't mean half what I said, but the fact is that you got angry and then I suppose I got angry--and then we both said more than we meant."

"No," said Peter slowly, "for you were quite right. I have been selfish and morbid. I see it all quite clearly. I'm going to be very different now, Cards, old man."

Cards' flat was splendid--everything in it from its grey Ascot trouserings kind of wall paper to its beautiful old chairs and its beautiful old china was of the very best--and Cards himself, in a dark blue suit with a black tie and a while pearl and white spats on his shining gleaming shoes, just ready to go out and startle Piccadilly was of the very best. He had never, Peter thought, looked so handsome.

At the door Cards put a hand on Peter's shoulder.

"Get in late this morning, Peter?"

"Why?" said Peter, turning round.

"Oh, nothing," Cards regarded him, smiling. "I'll see you to-night at the Lesters. Until then, old man--"

Neither Mrs. Rossiter nor Clare made any allusion to the quarrel but it had nevertheless, Peter felt, made reconciliation all the more difficult. Mrs. Rossiter now seemed to imply in her additional kindnesses to Cardillac that she felt for him deeply and was sorry that he, too, should have been made to suffer under Peter's bear-like nature.

There was even an implied atmosphere of alliance in the attitude of the three to Peter, an alliance fostered and cemented by Mrs. Rossiter and spread by her, up and down, in and out about the house.

It was obvious indeed now that Mrs. Rossiter was, never again, under any terms, to be won over. She had decided in her own slow mind that Peter was an objectionable person, that he neglected his wife, quarrelled with his best friends and refused to fulfil the career that he had promised to fulfil. She saw herself now in the role of protectress of her daughter, and that role she would play to the very end. Clare must, at all costs, be happy and, in spite of her odious husband, happy she should be.

Peter discerned Mrs. Rossiter's state of mind on the whole clearly enough, but with regard to Clare he was entirely in the dark. He devoted his days now to her service. He studied her every want, was ready to abandon his work at any moment to be with her, and was careful also to avoid too great a pestering of her with attentions.

"I know women hate that," he said to himself, "if you go down on your knees to them and hang around them they simply can't stand it. I won't show her that I care."

And he cared, poor fellow, as he had never cared for her before during their married life. The love that he had had for Stephen he would now give to Stephen's mother would she but let him.

But it was a difficult business. When Mrs. Rossiter was present he could do nothing right. If he were silent she would talk to Clare about people being morose; and what a pity it was that some people didn't think of other people a little instead of being miserable about things for which they had nobody to thank but themselves, and if he tried to be light-hearted and amusing Mrs. Rossiter bore with his humour in so patient and self-denying a spirit that his efforts failed lamentably and only made the situation worse than it had been before.

Clare seemed to be now entirely in her mother's hands; she put her mother's large flat body between herself and Peter and, through that, they were compelled to talk.

Peter also knew now that Clare was exceedingly uncomfortable in his presence--it was almost as though she had something to conceal. On several occasions he had noticed that his sudden entrance into a room had confused her; once he had caught her hurriedly pushing a letter out of sight. She was now strangely timid when he was there; sometimes with a sudden furious beating of the heart he fancied that she was coming back to him again because she would make little half movements towards him and then draw back. Once he found her crying.

The impulse to beg her to confide in him was almost stronger than he could resist, and yet he was terrified lest by some sudden move he should frighten her and drive her back and so lose the little ground that he had gained. The strangest thing of all was that Mrs. Rossiter herself did not know what Clare's trouble was. She, of course, put it all down to Peter, but she could accuse him of nothing specific. Clare had not confided in her.

Did Cards know? Peter suddenly asked himself with a strange pang of jealousy. That he should be jealous of Cards, the most splendid, most honourable fellow in the world! That, of course, was absurd. And yet they were together so often, and it was with Jerry Cardillac alone that Clare seemed now at ease.

But Peter put all such thoughts at once away from him. Had it been any other man but Cards he might have wondered... but he would trust Cards alone with his wife in the wilderness and know that no ill could come of it. With--other women Cards might have few scruples--Peter had heard such stories--but with Peter's wife, no.

Peter wondered whether perhaps Clare did not miss young Stephen more than they knew! Oh, if that were the reason how he could take her into his arms and comfort her and love her! Poor little Clare... the time would come when she would show him that she wanted him.

Meanwhile the months passed, the proofs of "Mortimer Stant" had been corrected and the book was about to appear. To Peter now everything seemed to hang upon this event. It became with him, during the weeks before its appearance, a monomania. If this book were a success why then dare and Mrs. Rossiter and all of them would come round to him. It was the third book which was always so decisive, and there was ground to recover after the comparative failure of the second novel. As he corrected the proofs he persuaded himself that "Mortimer Stant" wasn't, after all, so bad. It had been ambitious of him, of course, to write about the emotions and experiences of a man of forty and there was perhaps rather an overloaded and crude attempt at atmosphere, but there was life in the book. It had, he thought, more swing in the telling of it than the other two.

It is possible, when one is correcting proofs to persuade oneself of anything. The book appeared and was, from the first moment, loaded with mishap. On the day of publication there was that terrible fire at the Casino theatre--people talked of nothing else for a fortnight. Moreover by an unlucky chance young Rondel's novel, "The Precipice," was published on the very same day, and as the precipice was a novel one and there were no less than three young ladies prepared to fall over it at the same moment, it of course commanded instant attention. It was incidentally written with an admirable sense of style and a keen sense of character.

But Peter was now in a fever that saw an enemy round every corner. The English News Supplement only gave him a line:--"'Mortimer Stant.' A new novel by the author of 'Reuben Hallard,' depicting agreeably enough the amorous adventures of a stockbroker of middle-age." To this had all his fine dreams, his moments of exultation, his fevered inspiration come!

He searched the London booksellers but could find no traces of "Mortimer Stant" at any of them. His publishers told him that it was only the libraries that bought any fiction, with the exception of volumes by certain popular authors--and yet he saw at these booksellers novels by numbers of people who could not lay claim to the success that "Reuben Hallard" had secured for its writer.

The reviews came in slowly, and, excepting for the smaller provincial papers, treated him with an indifference that was worse than neglect.

"This interesting novel by Mr. Westcott"--"A pleasant tale of country life by the author of 'Reuben Hallard.' Will please those who like a quiet agreeable book without too much incident."

One London weekly review--a paper of considerable importance--took him severely to task, pointed out a number of incoherences of fact, commented on carelessness of style and finally advised Mr. Westcott, "if he is ever to write a book of real importance to work with greater care and to be less easily contented with a superficial facility."

But worse than these were the opinions of his friends. Henry Galleon was indeed gone, but there were a few--Mrs. Launce, Alfred Lester, William Trent, Alfred Hext--who had taken a real and encouraging interest in him from the beginning. They took him seriously enough to tell him the truth, and tell him the truth they did. Dear Mrs. Launce, who couldn't bear to hurt anybody and saw perhaps that he was taking the book a great deal more hardly than he had taken the others, veiled it as well as she could:--"I do think it's got splendid things in it, Peter dear--splendid things. That bit about the swimming and the character of Mrs. Mumps. But it doesn't hang together. There's a great deal of repetition. It's as though you'd written it with your mind on something else all the time."

And so he had--oh! so he had! What cruel irony that because his mind was set to winning Clare back to him the chief means for gaining her should be ruined by his very care for her.

What to do when all the things of life--the bustle and hurry, the marriages and births and deaths--came in between him and his work so that he could scarcely see it, so many things obscured the way.

Poor Mortimer! Lost indeed behind a shifting, whirring cloud of real life--never to emerge, poor man, into anything better than a middle-aged clothes' prop.

For six weeks the book lingered in the advertisements. A second edition, composed for the most part of an edition for America, was announced, there were a belated review or two ... and then the end. The end of two years' hopes, ambitions, struggles, sweat and tears--and the end, too, of how much else?

From the beginning, so far back as he could remember, he had believed that he would one day write great books; had believed it from no conceit in him but simply because he clung so tenaciously to ambition that it had become, again and again, almost realised in the intensity of his dreams of it. He had known that this achievement of his would take a long time, that he must meet with many rebuffs, that he must starve and despair and be born again, but, never at any moment, until now, had he, in his heart of hearts, doubted that that great book was in front of him.

He had seen his work, in his dreams, derided, flouted, misunderstood.

That was the way with most good work, but what he had never seen was its acceptance amongst the ranks of the "Pretty Good," its place given it beside that rising and falling tide of fiction that covered every year the greedy rocks of the circulating libraries and ebbed out again leaving no trace behind it.

Now, after the failure of "Mortimer Stant" for the first time, this awful question--"What if, after all, you should be an Ordinary Creature? What if you are no better than that army who fights happily, contentedly, with mediocrity for its daily bread and butter? That army, upon whose serried ranks you have perhaps, unconsciously, but nevertheless with pity, looked down?... What if you are never to write a word that will be remembered, never even to cause a decent attention, amongst your own generation?"

What if after all this stir and fluster, this pain and agony and striving, there should be nothing exceptional about Peter? What rock to stand on then?

He had never, perhaps, analysed his feelings about it all. He had certainly never thought himself an exceptional person ... but always in his heart there had been that belief that, one day, he would write an exceptional book.

He was very young, not yet thirty, but he had had his chance. It seemed to him, in these weeks following the death of "Mortimer Stant," that his career was already over. There was also the question of ways and means.

Just enough to live on with the reviewing and a column for an American paper and Clare's income, but if the books were all of them to fail as this one had failed--why then it was a dreary future for them both.

In fact there were now, at his feet, pits of so dismal and impenetrable a blackness that he refused to look down, but clung rather to his determination to make all things right with Clare again, and then things would come round.

If that failed him--why then, old black-faced father in Scaw House with your drunken cook and your company of ghosts, you shall have your merry way!

II

Henry Galleon was dead. Mrs. Launce was, unfortunately, during the whole of this period of Peter's career, away in the country, being burdened with work, children and ill-health. He turned then once again to Bobby.

He had seen very little of Bobby and Alice Galleon lately; he was as fond of Bobby as he had ever been, but Bobby had always been a background, some one who was there, one liked to think, if one wanted him--but if there was any one more exciting, then Bobby vanished.

Lately--for quite a long time now--there had been Cardillac--and somehow Cards and Bobby did not get on together and it was impossible to have them both at the same time. But now Peter turned to Bobby with the eagerness of a return to some comfortable old arm-chair after the brilliant new furniture of a friend's palace. Bobby was there waiting for him. It is not to be denied that the occasional nature of Peter's appearances had hurt them both--wounded Bobby and made Alice angry.